


Imagine Me & You (I Do)

by Marzi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Meeting in the Middle, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Book, ascetic, post-show, scared foliage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 04:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20334229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzi/pseuds/Marzi
Summary: Being a demon with an imagination has always served Crowley well. For Aziraphale, being an angel with an imagination has done quite the opposite.Or;Crowley's plants might be scared of him, but they are Utterly Terrified of Aziraphale.





	Imagine Me & You (I Do)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is basically three ideas I had that I decided to throw together into one fic because it all kinda fit together. So if any particular thread seems lost, it's because I forgot about it while dealing with another thought. I also consider this mixed book/show canon for the simple fact I pull on Crowley's optimism here, which is more persistent in the book and considerably wobblier/absent in the show.

“You won't disappoint him, will you? You wouldn't want to.”

The words weren't quite gentle, but they were uttered so softly, it took Crowley a moment to realize they had come from Aziraphale at all. He paused in the entryway, plant mister dangling from his hand, and watched. Aziraphale had extended one finger, as if attempting to coax a particularly nervous butterfly to land on him, fingertip nearly brushing the bottom of the leaf he was addressing. It didn't quiver, it didn't shake, but it went preternaturally still, despite the air circulating through his top of the line ventilation system. (The flat could be fully sealed and Crowley would be able to survive off a closed air filtration system, had he required air to live. It was one of those things, like the safe and the panic room, that had been so needlessly expensive he had had to have it, not that he had paid for any of it. At least the safe came in handy.)

Aziraphale leaned back, never touching the leaf, and clasped his hands behind his back as be observed the rest of the plants. Several pushed out tendrils of new growth as his calm scrutiny passed over them. Crowley hid his mister behind his back as the angel's eyes finally turned to him. Aziraphale's face lit up, as if he had been gone for years, and not just the minute it took to exit the room and then return.

“Ready for lunch, my dear?”

* * *

Crowley was fairly certain Aziraphale didn't have a filing system, so when he moved a stack of books and came across a filing cabinet, of all things, he could only stare. It wasn't just the neatly labeled cards on each drawer, denoting dates, it was the bizarrely holy aura reeking off the thing. Crowley didn't think he could touch it without getting scalded, but that didn't mean he didn't want to look.

He picked up a doily off a small table and prodded at one of the handles. He didn't immediately burst into flames, so that was a good thing. Carefully, doily in place like an obnoxiously lacy oven mitt, he grasped the top drawer and opened it. It wasn't locked, or Crowley had never considered that a possibility, for it opened easily enough. He grimaced, and groped in his pocket for his sunglasses at the faint light radiating out of the folder.

“Crowley, have you found- what are you doing?” Aziraphale sounded confused, not upset.

Crowley turned to face him, frown in place, and jerked his thumb behind him. “What's all this then?”

Aziraphale shuffled closer. “Oh! Memos. From upstairs. I'm a bit surprised Adam managed to put them back together, but I suppose he did make my corporation again. Though you would think the Antichrist wouldn't be able to make something holy....”

Ah. Pretentious holiness then. All bark, no bite. Crowley dropped the doily and reached into the cabinet to grab at one of the memos. “You kept these?”

“Yes, well, they are official Heavenly records. I couldn't just toss them out with the recycling.”

Crowley's eyes skimmed lazily over the text, and then rapidly over the text, and then he brought the paper closer to his eyes and read it yet again. “Angel, these... _Gabriel_ sent these too you?”

“Mm. Yes. I mentioned them before, I believe?”

_Strongly worded memo, _he had said. Crowley knew bureaucracy. Crowley knew the stuffed and polished look of heaven. Crowley had thought he knew how angels acted, behaved. Then again, seeing as most of his angelic observations were based on Aziraphale, maybe he really shouldn't have considered himself an expert. He had thought the trial a high stress, peculiar outlier of behavior from the angels he had witnessed there. Apparently it wasn't.

Crowley slowly lowered the page, partly to keep himself from reading it again, and partly because the light was starting to hurt his eyes. “Aziraphale, this is a death threat.”

“Nonsense.” He came forward and took the page from Crowley's hand, re-reading it before putting it back in the drawer. “It was just a reminder that there are consequences to one's actions, and that miracles ought to be used more sparingly.”

No, it had not directly stated anything, but it had _implied,_ it had _insinuated_, it had _hinted _at ultimate destruction. Or something similar. “Are all of them like that?” He eyed the cabinet with a sudden wariness that had nothing to do with the holiness leaking out of it.

“Generally. Did you find that Beethoven biography?”

“Uh no. Not yet. Why don't you just miracle it up?”

“Well then, I wouldn't know where it's been. And it might be missing, some things are, after everything.” Aziraphale had never had to witness the fire or the destruction, but he had had to come home to find everything slightly out of place. That had to be unsettling in its own right.

Crowley watched him putter away before looking back at the filing cabinet, and then dropped the stack of books back in front of it to hide away again. Out of sight, out of... well, out of sight.

* * *

Angels, as a rule, didn't spend a lot of time daydreaming, or any of it, really. Crowley remembered Heaven before the Fall, everyone had a task, everyone had a God given purpose, a reason. They didn't need to do anything outside of that. Including think. Particularly think. Why would they need to do otherwise? Until Lucifer and a few others suddenly started asking, and Crowley assumed after the Fall those remaining pretty much avoided the idea of questions altogether. Asking _why_ implied a basic concept of understanding things outside of oneself. That the universe might turn differently from a different perspective, or if you happened to do something other than what you currently were. _Why_ implied the capacity to imagine a world that was different from the one that existed.

At least, that was how Crowley formed his why's. Having an imagination was a rare trait in a demon. Perhaps solely unique within himself. Most of those who Fell had all their _why's_ answered in the Pit. They stopped asking, and became like angels once more, following their Satan given tasks with no other thoughts. Crowley had never been able to stop with the questions. When he was new, a part of him had always assumed the _whys_ were in everyone, but as time tumbled on, he realized that wasn't the case. Particularly for demons.

His small sample size for angels of course, was Aziraphale. Aziraphale may never have asked _why_ out loud, but Crowley had seen them crowded behind his eyes. His anxiety on the wall of Eden. His desperate cling of _ineffable_ in the floods. In every anxious twitch when Crowley asked _why why why_ within earshot of him. Aziraphale had an imagination. It very suddenly occurred to Crowley that most angels didn't, just like most demons.

They did though, the two of them, had, after all, defied everything and done their best to save the earth. You couldn't do that without a fair bit of imagination. So what if their contribution was negligible in the end? They had managed to think of it, and that was remarkable. _Whys _and _what ifs_ molded and created in such a manner that their contemporaries could never even fathom.

Where once he would have coveted and kept quiet about this connection between them, Crowley now felt compelled to share this bit of information with Aziraphale. They were, after all, on _their_ side now, and the angel had no more reason to take offense at being compared to a demon. So long as that demon was Crowley.

“You know,” he spoke up from where he was sprawled out in the bookshop's backroom. “You think good.” Perhaps he should have sobered up first.

“Hmm?” Aziraphale didn't look up from where he was pouring the last of the bottle of wine into a glass that was already dangerously full.

“Your brain. S'good.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“No, no.” Crowley struggled into an upright position. “I mean, your brain is like... Yeah. S'good.”

“You know I don't te-tech-t-_hmm_. You know I don't really have a brain. Neither do you.”

“Brainless! The pair of us. It's in common, it'sss, it's-”

“S'good.” Aziraphale smiled, and his lips disappeared into his wine.

Crowley nodded. “S'why you gave away your sword.”

Aziraphale choked a bit at that.

“Because your head.” Crowley continued, unperturbed. They did not have brains, or lungs, or throats, so he wasn't in real danger of choking. “Your heart. Your...” His fingers whirled through the air as he tried to capture the right word.

“Compassion?”

If Crowley had looked over at him then, he would have noticed a startling sobriety in his companion. “Imagination! That'sss... Yes. S'good. Imagination.”

* * *

It had never occurred to Crowley that plants could have an imagination. They followed orders. They did what they were told. They _knew_ the consequences. That was enough. That's what kept demons in line. The knowledge of true destruction. You couldn't trail off when threatening a demon. You couldn't say, _or else_, unless you had already mentioned the else. None of them had the capacity to imagine anything other than what they knew. They knew death. They knew torture. When you wanted a demon to do what needed to be done, you mentioned those things and they got to it, because they knew what those were. Crowley had followed that model with his plants. Sure, he had to make some examples so that they knew the stakes in the beginning, but things fell into a decent pattern after that.

Ever since Aziraphale started his little visits, Crowley began to reexamine his whole methodology. Aziraphale did not threaten. He did not remind them of the consequences of failure. He did nothing explicit. He simply, _implied_.

_You know what it means, if, ah, not my place to say-_

_You can do better, _can't you? _There it is. Shouldn't fall slack. You know how it goes._

_You've never withered, _have you? _Of course not. Of course not, otherwise..._

At first Crowley had considered it a fluke. That it wasn't terror, but fear of disappointing the angel that prompted the changes. The plants, after all, knew what Crowley would do to them should they fail. Yet it was not pride or relief that caused the new blooms. They seemed to hold their collective oxygen emissions whenever the angel entered the room. They didn't know Aziraphale, and apparently the not knowing was all the more horrifying, judging by the exuberant plant growth that had scaled itself across the wall in less than a week. They didn't know, so they _imagined._

It was a little remarkable, honestly. He wondered if the angel knew what he was doing. His bright and cheery voice, cooled down to a calm cadence. He had to, surely? Crowley spritzed a few leaves, mind drawn back to the filing cabinet tucked away in Aziraphale's shop.

* * *

“Before.”

Aziraphale's eyebrows rose up. “Before?”

For two beings who had been around since the Beginning, it was a heavy statement. Before meant a lot of things, in that moment, to Crowley, Before meant a very specific somewhen. France, the Reign of Terror, hadn't been _the_ turning point so much as _a_ turning point. Aziraphale had, after all, asked Crowley to lunch before, without the added benefit of hiding it behind repayment to a favor. They had eaten together many times since, on invitations both of them had extended.

Crowley picked up his espresso cup and stared out the window. “Never mind.”

“My dear, are you quite alright?”

“It's just... Before.”

Aziraphale lowered his fork, giving their conversation his complete attention. “You've said.”

“Did you ever think about us, Before?” Before Armageddon. Before Heaven and Hell stepped away. Before Crowley had just about taken up residence in the backroom of the bookshop, before Aziraphale had terrified his plants into virulent growth on his behalf. Before.

“I- well, there was the Arrangement, but you don't mean that.”

Crowley didn't have to say anything for Aziraphale to understand that was not what he meant.

“Perhaps this would be a conversation better had back at the bookshop.”

“No one is listening to us here, angel.” And if the staff at the Ritz did eavesdrop, it wasn't like the conversation would make too much sense.

“Right. I just...” His eyes flickered towards the edge of Crowley's sunglasses before looking down at the table as he settled his silverware down. “Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, I thought about us, Before.”

“When?”

“France. We-”

“-had crepes. Yes.” Crowley finished his espresso. “I think we should go back to the bookshop.”

Aziraphale looked forlornly down at his unfinished meal. “Yes, I think we should.”

* * *

Crowley hadn't imagined or expected to run into Aziraphale when he first crawled, well, slithered, into the Garden. It had just happened. Eventually, being one of two immortal beings stationed to earth, he had come to expect it. It honestly took a few thousand years for him to imagine running into him. To weave together scenarios wherein they might cross paths. They were generally enjoyable little daydreams. Places he considered taking the angel, and often ended up going, though not always in the way he first imagined. Things he would do for him, though frequently he tried his best not to think too much about those. For an angel, Aziraphale got himself into near-discorporating trouble a lot more than Crowley thought feasible.

He wasn't sure what Aziraphale had thought of their early encounters, he would have to ask. At the moment, he was only really sure of one of them.

Crowley took off his sunglasses as Aziraphale set down the tea tray in the backroom. They sat across from each other and Aziraphale poured for them both.

“Well,” he said when he was done.

“Well,” Crowley drawled in response.

Aziraphale sighed. “Why bring it all up now?”

“Is there a better time for it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Crowley leaned back farther into the couch. “I wondered, then. After France.”

He rolled his eyes, very un-angelic. “You brought me chocolates when I opened the shop, you did more than wonder.”

“I didn't think you noticed.” Not quite true, but he hadn't seemed to notice in the way he had wanted him to.

“Of course I noticed.” He set down his teacup.

“Then why-”

“_It was holy water, Crowley._” Aziraphale looked intensely embarrassed at the sudden volume of his voice. He sighed, shoulders deflating. “It was more than that.”

“Was it? I don't recall asking for anything else.” _Fraternizing,_ after everything that was what had been said to him. The word still made him prickly, though the memory, not so much.

“Of course not. You always...”

Crowley slumped forward, elbows on knees. “I always what?”

Aziraphale very nearly smiled. “You always saw the best in things. Still do. Except for then.”

“I wasn't going to use it on myself.”

“Maybe not.”

And Crowley couldn't refute him, not really. He hadn't wanted to, but he could have, should the need arise. He had thought so, anyway.

“You always...” Sorrow and wonder fought at the edge of Aziraphale's lips. He finally smiled, but Crowley was not certain what it was supposed to mean. “You always saw the potential in things. You could always look at something, and see the future of it. Though Odegra was a bad idea my dear, really, Mu of all the- ah, but I digress.” He rubbed his hands down his beige clad thighs. “I've never... I've never been much good, at the future business. I'm barely caught up to _now_, don't have much mind for what's to come.” He forced a laugh.

That, Crowley knew, was not strictly true. Aziraphale could imagine the future just fine, what that future turned into once he thought on it too long... well, he was only just beginning to figure that out. “My plants are scared of you.”

“I- what?”

“My plants, angel, they're terrified of you.”

His brow scrunched together, nerves washing away as confusion took over. “Oh.”

“The future isn't always bad, angel.”

He blinked. “For the plants?”

“For us.”

That _us_ caused Aziraphale's whole body to still.

“You made me wonder first, you know. In Rome.” As if this were a situation where blame needed to be placed.

“Oysters.”

“Oysters.” Crowley agreed.

He looked sheepish. “You know, I really was just thinking about lunch.”

“I know. But it got me thinking then, that you wouldn't mind seeing me.” That had been startling, pleasant, _nice_. It was the first time Aziraphale had walked up to him to start a conversation. It had let Crowley know he was more than just tolerated.

“No, I didn't mind you at all. I don't mind you. I mean... oh heavens.” He reached forward to recapture his teacup between his hands.

Crowley smiled. “But France. It was like you knew I would come for you. Like you wanted me to.”

Silence. It made him drop his smile.

“You already told me you thought about it then.”

“I know.” Aziraphale twirled his cup on its saucer.

He could not help but let a little irritation creep into his voice. They had already discussed this. “You knew what I was doing when I came to your shop opening.”

“I know.”

“Then why-”

“Holy water, Crowley.” Unlike before, his voice was so soft he could barely hear it. “We were finally just settling into enjoying ourselves, and suddenly... I already enjoyed spending time with you, my dear, but I was just beginning to think I could plan on it. You seemed to be too. And then you went and asked me for holy water.” He abandoned his teacup to the table again, looking like he was about to spring up from his chair and begin pacing.

“It wasn't because of that.”

“Wasn't it?” His gaze snapped up to meet Crowley's, suddenly sharp and intense. “You realized what we were doing, you thought ahead and you saw something awful waiting for us. _You. _You who see the best in everything.”

“I really don't.”

“You were handed the Antichrist and your first thought was _it doesn't have to end._”

“Uh, ah. Fair, though my first thought was actually _why me._”

Aziraphale looked away, almost smiling again. It didn't last. All traces of amusement were gone when he finally spoke. “I just... I had barely considered the idea of something, and there you were, already thinking past all of the what ifs, as if we already were, and even further, past that. You saw our trials, though you didn't fully know why they'd be happening. You thought, if we do this, we're going to die.”

The next silence was Crowley's.

“So you see, I panicked.” Aziraphale paused, and looked down as if he was checking his manicure. When he looked back up, his expression was resolute. “And then you came to me during the Blitz, and I realized no matter what, it was already too late.”

“What?” Crowley sprang up at that. This was not what he intended. This was not what he imagined. This was not want he wanted. “It's not too late, we're here, now, it's-”

“I already loved you.” Aziraphale continued talking as if he had not been interrupted. “Losing you was going to hurt, either way. Your futures always have a way of coming true, so I gave you what you asked for, and I asked for more time. Maybe if I delayed, we wouldn't be so close to destruction.”

Crowley didn't sit back down, though his bones were suddenly light with relief. Relief and a new kind of terror. _I already loved you._ What was he supposed to say to that? “No one but Agnes Nutter knew the future, angel. And, well.” He gestured vaguely upwards. “Me, I just... I just hope for the best.”

Aziraphale got to his feet, smoothing non-existent creases in his trousers. Were they terrified into neatness by what ifs just as his plants were?

Crowley kept speaking past the sudden lump in his throat. “And I didn't ask for holy water because of that.”

“Oh?” He was coy now, trying to tamp down his curiosity.

“I wanted it so that we could have a fighting chance.”

Distress cut back through his features, eyes growing distant. “You still knew something terrible would happen if-”

“I knew it was something worth fighting for.”

Aziraphale wrung his hands together. “You must think me a coward, then.”

Crowley reached forward, hands hesitating just a moment before resting on Aziraphale's, stilling them both. “We're here now, aren't we? And if that's too much, we were here yesterday, and that was good, right?”

“It's always wonderful with you here.”

“Then we'll start with yesterday.”

Aziraphale smiled, fingers shifting so that Crowley's could rest between his, lacing them together.

* * *

Angels were kept in line by being told what to do. No fuss, no muss. Above all else, they were obedient to a higher power, which was one of the main dividing factors in the Fall. When you trailed off when talking to an angel, left something uncertain, the general reaction from a bureaucratic being with no imagination was to ask for clarity. Unless that angel was Aziraphale.

Crowley moved the stack of books and stared at the filing cabinet. Angels craved order and certainty. If any other member of the host had been sent Gabriel's missives, his vagueries, they would have asked for clarity and been sent a proper itinerary on what to do next. They would have been set on the straight and narrow and followed the higher power as the majority of them did. But not Aziraphale. Who had never actually disobeyed orders, because nothing direct had ever been said to him. Who looked between the blank spaces in the reprimands given to him, and instead of seeking clarity, imagined something worse. Aziraphale, who had never asked _why, _ but had instead plagued himself with _what if._

Crowley was loathe to start a fire in the bookshop after all that happened, so in the end he dragged the cabinet outside and dumped it into a storm drain. Miraculously, it fit.

When he came back inside, Aziraphale was standing near where the cabinet had once rested, brow furrowed. “There was something here earlier, wasn't there?”

“Just a bit of rubbish.”

“I don't collect rubbish Crowley, I- ah ha!” He leaned forward towards the stack of books that had concealed the cabinet. “The Beethoven biography. I knew you would find it eventually.”

“Actually I- well, never mind, yeah, I did. There it is. Definitely found it. Me.”

Aziraphale smiled, eyes still on the book, thumb brushing across the pages. The silence between them was comfortable, familiar, but it made Crowley's skin itch. Silence was an infinite canvas of terror for those with an imagination. The gaps, the in-between, all dark and bottomless unless spoken otherwise. The right word could nudge that infinite bleakness into something more manageable. Not saying something wasn't always the worst option, but this silence was the piece of a thousand others. Little slivers of Before. Before Armageddon, before they spoke, before they were an_ us_.

“I love you,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale's eyes immediately left the book he held to turn to him. “Now and tomorrow. And the tomorrow after tomorrow, etcetera, et al.”

Aziraphale's lips were parted softly in surprise. “Oh.”

“And someone once said, and I think I'm quoting here, 'your futures always come true'. 'Your' being 'me'.”

“Mine.”

“What?”

“_Your_ being _mine, _my dear.”

“Mine futures doesn't really-”

“Oh, you know what I meant.”

Crowley smiled. "Yeah, I do."

**Author's Note:**

> So my three thoughts were,  
1) What if Gabriel's memos were all basically shut up and die already/death threats that Aziraphale never acknowledged as such  
2) What if Aziraphale picked up on Crowley's plant keeping practices and was more horrifying than the demon (I get fandom's love of him being nice to them in contrast, but I also like the idea of him also have no f'ing idea how to care for plants so vaguely threatening them makes sense to him)  
3) I 100% believe the two of them were on the verge of shacking up post-France pre-holy water request, and this is a way for me to be like 'it took a while for them to get to like each other, and then they stumbled and it took a few hundred years for them to recover'.
> 
> I also am a staunch supporter of 'you go too fast for me' and letting Aziraphale go their own pace.


End file.
